For more than 10 minutes Miller spouted off irrelevant nonsense until Tapper finally showed him the door with the send-off “I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time.” If only more folks had the courage to take decisive action on the useless, the meaningless, the dishonest, the distracting.

We waste our customers’ time with undifferentiated products, boring experiences and one-size-fits-all marketing.

We waste our teams’ time with meetings that have no discernible goals or impact.

We waste our friends’ and followers’ time with posts that serve no purpose other than to prop up our egos.

We waste our own time by needing to be right, staying stuck in resentment, obsessing about things we cannot change, confusing busy with effective, and on and on.

Mary Oliver, probably my favorite poet, beckons us with the question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

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When someone we care about fails to admit they have a serious problem and fails to do the work to remedy it, are we shocked when they eventually experience the consequences of their addictive or dysfunctional behavior?

Are we surprised one little bit when a brand facing stiff competition and highly disruptive forces finds itself struggling to stay in business because it never bothered to get serious about innovation?

Is it at all astonishing that deficits mount or poverty persists or bridges collapse when politicians lack the courage to address the root causes and constantly kick the can down the road?

In The Sun Also Rises one of Hemingway’s characters famously answered the question of how he went bankrupt by saying: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

If we are honest, many of us see the wall we’re going to crash into long before we feel the impact. But fear keeps us stuck in inaction and false hope.

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It’s typically not difficult to calculate the cost of starting something, of moving ahead, of taking the plunge.

Perhaps it’s a new IT project or a marketing test. Possibly it’s a decision to try a pilot concept or invest in a promising technology. Or maybe we’re considering taking the next big step in a hopeful personal relationship.

When we have to ante up additional time, write that big check, invest more emotional commitment, the price tag often seems pretty obvious.

Yet what we get wrong (or dramatically underestimate) are the consequences of our hesitation. We lean on the desire for better data and convince ourselves we need more time to weigh or explore our options. We become a slave to the pull of our perfectionism. We tell ourselves the time is just not quite right to act.

Ultimately, what keeps us stuck, what causes us to not pull the trigger, is our fear of getting it wrong, of looking stupid, of being judged, of fully experiencing and feeling our vulnerability.

It’s not hard to see how waiting too long to innovate has been the death knell for many companies. Think Blockbuster, Netflix, RadioShack and (soon) Sears. They paid (or are paying) the ultimate price for waiting.

My guess is that with whatever organizations you’ve been involved in you can readily point to opportunities that were missed because moving ahead was deemed too risky, when just the opposite proved to be true.

And maybe we’ve let real love and connection allude us for similar reasons.

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As just one high profile example, when the President of the United States is challenged on wrongdoing in his administration, his immediate response is to bring up the Clintons. Mention “alleged” sexual predatory behavior on his part (or fellow Republicans) and the knee jerk reaction is to shift the attention to the misdeeds of members of the opposition party. And so on.

If there were a Nobel Prize for chutzpah there’s little doubt who’d win.

Of course, The Donald is hardly alone. The parade of statements that start with some variation of “yeah, but what about?” often appears unending. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that I’ve engaged in some Ph.D. level deflection myself. You can definitely find at least one person who can give give you chapter and verse on my ninja-like avoidance skills.

It turns out it’s hard for many of us to own our stuff.

But, deep down, anyone with the emotional IQ a notch above a salamander knows that just because someone else might have engaged in similar bad behavior does not make our misdeeds okay. At all. Not one little bit.

While we may feel good about our self-righteous quest to point out the hypocrisy of others (thank you for your service!) what we are doing is merely taking the focus away from that for which we are ultimately responsible.

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The amygdala is sometimes known as the “lizard brain.” It’s more or less a holdover from prehistoric times and its role is to activate our primal survival instincts such as aggression and fear. When we are faced with a perceived threat, it can reflexively kick us into “fight or flight” mode. Sometimes–typically when we get overwhelmed and flooded with stress hormones–we can bounce back and forth from attacker to avoider, from villain to victim. Or we can shut down entirely.

At work, the lizard brain can keep us from trying new stuff despite knowing we need to innovate. It can cause us to push back hard on challengers to the status quo because we fear being wrong or looking stupid. Or we can just get stuck, paralyzed into inaction.

In personal relationships, those of us who fear intimacy can push away those whom we love, despite our desire to be more deeply connected. Or we can bolt for the door just as we get closer to what we so strongly desire.

The Resistance is real. So is self-sabotage. But as Pema Chodron reminds us, “fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Other circumstances require us to stand up and fight and say “enough is enough.” No one should endure tantrums or constant boundary violations or harassment or far worse.

Discerning the situations where we need to get in and rumble and get messy and walk through our fear is not easy. It takes real courage to remain in the arena when everything tells us to to flee. To engage when the fear comes up. To do the hard, uncomfortable work. To be neither victim, nor persecutor, nor rescuer, but an accountable adult, fully present, living in reality and owning our truth.

Our restlessness is part of the human condition. And the lizard brain can be easily activated–even more so if we have a history of trauma.

But like a dog being trained, we can learn to stay. Stay engaged. Stay focused. Stay patient. Stay accountable.

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A lot of people will be going to the polls today. But most won’t–and not because they aren’t holding elections in their community.

Voter turnout is ridiculously low in many parts of the country, particularly in local elections. And that means those that actually show up have disproportionate influence.

Of course we get to vote on lots of things each and every day by deciding what we give our time and attention to. And it’s easy to vote “no”.

It’s comfortable to play it safe. To hope someone else will do it. To stay in thought, rather than action. To ruminate on what could have been, or fantasize about what might be someday. To admire others good work from a distance. To be the critic, rather than the person in the arena. To tell ourselves that we will be ready to commit when various forces align that will make for the perfect moment to start. But we’re never ready.

The way we vote matters. And it turns out that in just about everything we are confronted with those that show up have disproportionate influence.